On this day in 1899, a congressional act authorized the formation of the Thirty-Third Infantry Regiment, better known as the "Texas Regiment," one of the most famous American combat units of the...(Read More)

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REAGAN, ROCKY

REAGAN, ROCKY (1883–1975). Rocky Reagan, cattleman, rodeo and stock-show promoter, and writer, was born to Green Pryor and Alabama Harrison (Edwards) Reagan in Helena, Texas, on August 7, 1883, the youngest of eight children. His father, an early country doctor in South Texas, gave Rocky a heifer calf the day he was born. Rocky at one time controlled 125,000 acres of grazing land on which he ran 4,000 cattle, 1,500 Spanish goats, and sixty saddle horses. He also trained quarter horses as cutting horses and judged cutting-horse contests. For many years he and his children staged rodeos, such as those in Beeville, Kingsville, Laredo, and Corpus Christi. Reagan was a director of both the San Antonio and South Texas livestock shows. He also assisted in promoting oil and gas development in South Texas. For some sixty years he was an elder in the First Presbyterian Church in Beeville. He joined the Evergreen Masonic Lodge in Oakville in 1904. He worked with the Campus Christian Fellowship at Texas A&I University and with both Boy and Girl Scouts. Reagan wrote two volumes of tales at the insistence of J. Frank Dobie. The first, Rocky's Chuck Wagon Stories (1968, revised in 1969), was followed by Rocky's Yarns in 1973. He also wrote a biography of his father, G. P. Reagan-Country Doctor (1963), and a history of the Masonic lodge in Oakville. In 1907 Reagan married Eula Louise Cleveland, who bore him seven children. After her death in 1930 he married Annie Lee Burns Littlejohn. He died on April 11, 1975, at his home near Three Rivers.